Living with Severe Period Pain: Jen’s Story of Finding Relief and Confidence

Jen had experienced severe period pain since she was 12 years old. By the time we worked together, her symptoms weren’t just affecting her physically. They were affecting her confidence, her work and her ability to trust her own body.

Jen’s story reflects her individual experience and the changes she reported. Our therapeutic work focused on her emotional experiences, beliefs and responses alongside appropriate medical care. 

When period pain starts affecting more than your body.

As a member of airline cabin crew, Jen loved her job. But her periods had become so painful, heavy and difficult to manage that there were occasions when she became seriously unwell while working. She had experienced fainting episodes and had even been taken off flights because of her symptoms.  Eventually, it wasn’t only the pain she was struggling with. It was the fear of what might happen next.

When severe period pain starts affecting your whole life

Imagine getting ready for a job you enjoy, putting on your uniform and wondering whether you’ll make it through the day. For Jen, that uncertainty had become familiar.

She had experienced heavy, painful periods since adolescence. The pain could be extreme, accompanied by exhaustion and the embarrassment of becoming unwell in situations where she needed to remain professional and look after passengers. She’d sought medical help over the years, but she was still struggling with her symptoms.

At times, her periods interfered so seriously with her work that she couldn’t complete a flight. And once that had happened, she began worrying about it happening again. Jen described sitting in the airport car park, anxious about whether she would be able to cope with the day ahead.

She wasn’t simply worrying about being uncomfortable. She was worried about becoming unwell at work, letting people down and the possible consequences for her career. What had started as a physical problem was now affecting how safe and confident she felt going about her everyday life.

Severe period pain should never simply be dismissed

Period pain is common, but pain that prevents you from working, causes fainting or significantly interferes with daily life deserves proper medical attention.

The HSE’s guidance on period pain advises women to seek medical advice when period pain is severe or affects everyday activities. The HSE also explains that painful periods can sometimes be associated with medical conditions such as endometriosis or fibroids.

The HSE’s information on heavy periods recognises that excessive menstrual bleeding can affect everyday life and may require investigation, including assessment for iron deficiency anaemia. Similarly, the NICE guideline on heavy menstrual bleeding emphasises the impact of heavy periods on quality of life and the importance of treatment that takes a woman’s priorities into account.

These are important medical considerations. Heavy bleeding and severe pain should not automatically be attributed to stress or emotional experiences, and symptoms as significant as Jen’s warrant appropriate medical investigation and treatment.

My work with her focused on another part of the picture: how living with those symptoms, alongside earlier experiences in her life, had affected her feelings of safety, confidence and trust in herself.

When you stop trusting your own body

Something that stood out when Jen and I began working together was how little she trusted her body. She’d lived with the expectation that her periods would be heavy, painful and exhausting. She knew what it was like to have plans disrupted or to be unable to get through an ordinary working day.

When another period approached, her immediate response was often a sense of dread: Here we go again. She expected things to go badly because that had been her experience for so long. And the more she worried about becoming unwell, the less confident she felt about travelling, going to work and doing the things she wanted to do.

One of the most important things Jen wanted from our work was to feel more in control of her life and more able to trust herself. She wanted to feel safe in her body. The fear of pain can become another burden. 

When you’ve repeatedly experienced severe pain, it’s understandable to start anticipating the next episode. You might begin thinking about what could go wrong before you’ve even left the house. You may worry about whether you’ll manage your responsibilities or whether you’ll need to cancel plans again.

That fear is a response to something you’ve genuinely experienced. It doesn’t mean the pain is imagined or that your thoughts caused the medical condition.

What does the research say?

Research supports taking the emotional impact of menstrual pain seriously. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis by Rabinowitz and colleagues, involving 4,540 participants across 25 studies, found an association between cyclical pelvic pain and pain-related catastrophising. This is a research term used to describe patterns of heightened worry, helplessness or expecting the worst when experiencing pain.

The review found a relationship between these experiences, but it couldn’t establish that worried thoughts caused the pain or that changing those thoughts would resolve an underlying menstrual condition.

What it does help explain is why the emotional response to ongoing pain deserves attention alongside medical care. When pain has repeatedly interrupted your life, the anticipation of it can become another burden to carry.

What did Jen and I actually work on?

Our work together involved four sessions of Havening and Parts-informed therapy, incorporating elements of the Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) approach and visualisation.

Rather than focusing solely on her period symptoms, we began exploring something that seemed to be affecting several areas of Jen’s life. She didn’t feel safe, and she wanted to learn how to trust herself again.

Jen had experienced situations in which she’d felt vulnerable, powerless and unable to control what was happening around her. Some of those experiences had left her carrying feelings of guilt, sadness and anger. She’d also developed doubts about whether she could rely on other people and whether she’d be able to protect herself.

As we explored those experiences, a recurring theme emerged: safety. Jen wanted to feel safe in her body, safe at work, safe travelling independently and confident in her own decisions.

Understanding patterns we don’t always recognise

Over time, we can develop beliefs and emotional responses that become so familiar we barely notice them. We might find ourselves anticipating danger, doubting our judgement or feeling responsible for things that were never within our control. Some of these responses can feel automatic, and we may not be consciously aware of where they began.

In Jen’s case, we explored how earlier experiences may have shaped her expectations about safety and her confidence in her ability to cope. Part of the work involved recognising feelings she hadn’t fully expressed or understood, particularly guilt, sadness and anger associated with experiences in which she’d felt vulnerable.

We explored the meanings she’d attached to those events and whether she could begin understanding them differently. The aim wasn’t to suggest that her past had caused her menstrual symptoms. It was to help Jen recognise emotional patterns that mattered to her and find different ways of responding.

The part of Jen that wanted to protect her

Through Parts-informed work, we explored different aspects of Jen’s responses. One part of her wanted to go to work, travel, enjoy life and feel confident. Another part was concerned about her safety and wanted to protect her from situations where something might go wrong.

During our work, Jen recognised how strongly that protective response influenced her feelings about leaving home and trusting herself. We explored the possibility that staying home could feel safer than facing the uncertainty of going out.

That was a meaningful therapeutic insight for Jen. It was not evidence that a protective part of her mind caused her periods to become heavy or painful. Menstrual bleeding has biological causes, and excessive bleeding requires appropriate medical assessment.

What mattered in our work was helping Jen become more aware of the thoughts, emotions and expectations influencing her choices. We wanted her to have more freedom to decide what she did, rather than feeling that fear was making those decisions for her.

Processing difficult experiences and creating different responses

Another important part of our work involved exploring earlier experiences that still carried emotional weight for Jen. Using Havening and Parts-informed work, we gave attention to feelings she hadn’t always been able to express or understand. We explored what she’d believed about herself in those situations and whether those beliefs still reflected what she wanted to believe today.

For me, this is part of what I mean by closing the loop. We can’t change an experience that’s already happened, but we can give attention to the feelings associated with it, reconsider the meanings we’ve attached to it and practise responding differently in the present.

With Jen, we also used visualisation to help her imagine everyday situations from a different perspective. Instead of feeling anxious about putting on her uniform and going to work, she wanted to imagine feeling excited, capable and relaxed. Instead of worrying about travelling alone, she wanted to feel confident that she could make decisions and look after herself.

She wanted to stop expecting something bad to happen and begin trusting her own ability to cope. We were working towards those changes while recognising that confidence develops through experience, not simply through telling yourself that everything will be fine.

The research behind working with emotional responses, pain and the mind–body connection

One of the reasons I work the way I do is because I believe it’s important to understand the whole experience of living with pain, not just the physical symptoms themselves.

When someone has spent years dealing with pain, her experiences can influence what she expects, what she fears and how she responds to everyday situations. Some of those responses become so familiar and automatic that she may not consciously recognise them.

In Jen’s case, we explored what it meant to feel safe, to trust herself and to stop anticipating that something would go wrong. We weren’t looking for an emotional cause of her heavy periods. We were working with the fear, beliefs and learned responses that had become part of her wider experience.

There’s a growing body of research into how emotional responses, expectations and psychological interventions relate to pain. And while the evidence varies between approaches, it gives us good reason to take this part of a woman’s experience seriously.

What neuroscience tells us about pain, fear and expectation

Pain isn’t simply a signal travelling from one part of the body to the brain. It’s an experience involving several interacting processes, including how the nervous system interprets and responds to information.

The International Association for the Study of Pain recognises that pain is influenced by biological, psychological and social factors. This doesn’t make pain imaginary. It recognises that our experience of it is complex.

Research has also explored the role of fear and expectation. A meta-analysis by Zale and colleagues (2013) found a significant association between pain-related fear and disability. More recently, research involving people living with chronic pain explored how changes in pain-related thinking, willingness to experience discomfort and engagement in everyday activities were associated with improvements during psychological pain treatments.

This is relevant to women like Jen, who are not only managing symptoms but also worrying about what might happen next. When your body has repeatedly let you down at work, you may begin anticipating difficulty before the working day has even begun.

That response is understandable. And it’s something we can explore and support, without dismissing the medical condition or assuming that thoughts are responsible for physical symptoms.

Havening: Supporting emotional processing and reducing distress

Havening formed an important part of my work with Jen. We used it while exploring experiences associated with fear, vulnerability and the need to feel safe.

Havening combines therapeutic touch with techniques intended to help people work with distressing emotional experiences. For me, its value in a session is the opportunity to explore difficult feelings while supporting the client to safely develop a different response to them.

There is emerging research into Havening and emotional distress.

A 2015 exploratory study by Thandi and colleagues reported improvements in anxiety, depressive symptoms and difficulties with work and social functioning following a Havening session.

In a 2022 study published in Psychology & Neuroscience, Sumich and colleagues examined Havening Touch in 24 participants recalling distressing experiences. The researchers found greater reductions in reported distress when Havening Touch was included, alongside measurable differences in electrical brain activity.

These are interesting findings because they investigate both the emotional experience and aspects of nervous-system activity. However, the studies were small, and further research is needed to establish how effective Havening is across different conditions and exactly how it works.

The research doesn’t show that Havening treats heavy menstrual bleeding. What it does provide is early evidence relevant to the emotional distress that formed an important part of Jen’s experience.

RTT, hypnosis and working with established beliefs

Although our sessions with Jen mainly involved Havening and Parts-informed work, I also drew on elements of my RTT training, particularly in exploring learned beliefs, automatic responses and the meanings attached to earlier experiences.

In my work, exploring beliefs is about helping a client recognise the meanings and expectations she may have developed, understand how they affect her today and consider whether a different response is possible.

For Jen, that meant exploring the belief that she couldn’t trust herself or feel safe, and helping her work towards greater confidence in everyday situations.

EFT and research into painful periods

There is emerging research looking specifically at Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) for menstrual pain.

A 2026 randomised controlled trial by Çuvadar and Özcan studied 65 women experiencing primary dysmenorrhoea, or painful periods without an identified underlying pelvic condition.  The women receiving EFT reported reductions in menstrual pain and improvements in some symptom and quality-of-life measures compared with those receiving menstrual-health education.

This is encouraging research into the potential role of EFT as a complementary approach to menstrual pain. Larger studies and longer-term follow-up are still needed.  EFT wasn’t one of the techniques I used during Jen’s four sessions, but I include this study because it contributes to a developing area of research into emotional approaches and menstrual symptoms.

It doesn’t establish that EFT treats heavy menstrual bleeding or that emotional therapy removes an underlying gynaecological condition.

Why this research matters to my work

For me, the important message isn’t that one therapy holds all the answers.

It’s that the physical, emotional and psychological aspects of living with ongoing symptoms can all deserve attention.

Medical care remains essential for investigating severe pain, heavy bleeding and other physical symptoms. Alongside that, there can be value in helping a woman explore the fear, beliefs, emotions and automatic responses that have developed through her experiences.

That’s what I was doing with Jen. We were exploring why she felt unsafe, why she’d lost confidence in her ability to cope and what it might take for her to begin trusting herself again.

Following our sessions, Jen reported significant improvements in her symptoms and her confidence. I can’t establish that our work caused the changes in her menstrual pain or bleeding, but I can describe the emotional work we undertook and the changes she experienced afterwards.

This is why I look beyond the physical symptoms. Not because they aren’t real, but because the woman living with them deserves to be understood as a whole person.F.

What changed for Jen?

Following our four sessions, Jen reported significant changes in her menstrual symptoms and her experience of going to work. She described having periods without the severe pain she’d previously experienced and no longer needing to miss work because of her symptoms. The anxiety she’d felt about going to work had also eased, and she was enjoying her job again.

She felt happier, more confident and more excited about travelling and getting on with her life. She also described changes beyond her periods, including greater confidence in her own decisions, improved boundaries and less anxiety in situations that had previously felt overwhelming.

For Jen, the difference wasn’t simply about getting through another working day. It was about feeling that she could trust herself again. After years of struggling with symptoms that had felt so unpredictable, that was incredibly meaningful.

These were Jen’s reported changes. They don’t establish that Havening, Parts-informed work or other therapeutic techniques changed the medical cause of her periods.

Four sessions were an important beginning, not the end of everything

One thing I want to acknowledge about Jen’s experience is that she still had other areas of her life she wanted to work on. Although she’d reported significant relief from her period symptoms and felt much more confident about work, she wanted to continue developing trust in herself.

She had decisions ahead of her about her career, relationships and what she wanted for her future. There were still beliefs she wanted to explore and areas where she wanted to feel stronger and more secure.

I think that’s an important part of her story. Progress doesn’t mean every difficulty suddenly disappears. Sometimes a change in one area gives someone more space and confidence to begin addressing other things that matter to them.

For Jen, those first four sessions represented a meaningful beginning.

My perspective: Helping a woman feel safe in herself

When I reflect on Jen’s experience, what I feel is important, isn’t only the change she reported in her periods. It’s the difference in how she felt about herself.

Here was a young woman who wanted to enjoy her career, travel independently and live her life, but who had become increasingly worried about her body and her ability to cope. She’d spent years dealing with severe physical symptoms, and alongside that, she was carrying fears and beliefs shaped by experiences in which she hadn’t felt safe or in control.

When we began exploring those patterns, I wasn’t trying to find an emotional explanation for her menstrual bleeding. I was interested in understanding the woman who was experiencing the symptoms.

Why did she feel unsafe? Why had she lost trust in herself? What feelings hadn’t she been able to express? What had she come to believe about her ability to cope? And what would it look like for her to feel genuinely confident in her own decisions?

These are the questions that matter to me because a woman is more than a diagnosis or a collection of symptoms.

Jen wanted to feel capable of looking after herself. She wanted to be able to enjoy her job again without anticipating something going wrong, and she wanted to believe that she could create a life in which she felt safe, respected and confident.

That’s the wider picture we explored together. Her reported physical improvement was significant, but so was the change in how she approached her work, her relationships and her future.

Jen’s experience is individual. I can’t promise that another woman will experience the same physical changes. What I can offer is an opportunity to explore the emotional experiences, beliefs and automatic responses that may be influencing how she’s living with her symptoms, while recognising the importance of appropriate medical care.

Are painful periods affecting more than just your period?

If you’re experiencing severe period pain, heavy bleeding or symptoms that interfere with your everyday life, it’s important to speak to your GP and investigate possible medical causes. You shouldn’t have to accept debilitating symptoms as simply part of being a woman. And if living with those symptoms has also left you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, frightened or unable to trust your body, that experience matters too.

At BodieScope, I work with women who want to explore the wider emotional picture alongside appropriate medical care. We look at your experiences, the beliefs and patterns that may have developed over time, and what you’d like to feel and do differently.

If you’d like to find out whether this approach might be right for you, we can begin with a free, no-obligation discovery call.

 

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Research, medical information and further reading

Medical information

Research into menstrual pain and emotional responses

Research into complementary approaches

This article describes Jen’s individual experience and the changes she reported. It does not establish that Havening, RTT, Parts-informed work or EFT treats the underlying medical causes of severe period pain or heavy menstrual bleeding. BodieScope provides complementary support and does not replace medical diagnosis or treatment.